The trophy descriptions are inaccurate since the December update. Instead of clearing all white/yellow/red maps to get the corresponding trophy, you have to place stones on the towers. One on each for apprentice, two on each for journeyman and three on each for master. You still have to beat all maps for Atlas of Worlds.

Finished up my first two games last week for the event. Beyond: Two Souls and Energy Balance. Beyond suffered from too many replay's which made it feel tedious instead of good. Playing through once or twice for the story would have made this a much better experience...replaying the last chapter (that's about an hour long) five or six times kind of killed it. Energy Balance was actually pretty fun. I recommend not using the puzzle solver just for the easy plat. None of the puzzles took more than 45 minutes to solve, but they were good brain exercises.
I've broken my normal mode of only one or two active games at once and have started Steins; Gate, Everybody's Golf, Driveclub VR, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. I have FFVIIR basically done and only need to finish Chapter 2 for the platinum. Saving it for a milestone, so I guess technically that wouldn't be an 'active' game. EG and Driveclub are kind of grindy sports games without a story so, I don't mind playing those a bit at a time. I only have the grindy stuff for Castlevania left too, and my kid seems to like fighting Dracula so I'll chip away at that with him.
SG had me nervous for a bit that I wasn't going to like it...I didn't realize it was all in Japanese and that I'd have to read the whole game, so that took me by surprise...it's also a mixture of very funny and extremely weird and took about four or five hours before really getting into the story and becoming interesting. However, now it's hit its stride and I think I'm going to like it.
Anyway...after a slow start to the event, I feel like I'm starting to make some good progress!
NS #COOKWITHME: Ultra Challenge: The Long Dark
NS #DANCESINGWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Beat Saber
NS #CRAFTWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Mass Effect Andromeda
#HANGOUTWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Beyond: Two Souls
22% #READWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Steins; Gate
NS #LEARNWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Mass Effect 2
91% #GETREADYWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Final Fantasy VII Remake
#SOLVEWITHME:Ultra Challenge: Energy Balance
41% #STAYHOMEANDWATCH: Ultra Challenge: Everybody's Golf
NS #BONDWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Detroit: Become Human
44% #WORKOUTWITHME: Ultra Challenge: DriveClub VR
NS #FIGHTWITHME:Ultra Challenge: Mass Effect 3
NS #TRAVELWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Mass Effect
NS #GAMEWITHME: Ultra Challenge: Ash of God: Redemption

I don't think I'll platinum another game before the end of the day...but I may get a few more trophies so I'll edit with my stats for the month tomorrow. I got two plats this month with one that I think qualifies for the HC. Beyond: Two Souls has Jodie going through CIA training (class) and is integral to the game. She also grows up in a research facility and is constantly testing her abilities. This game counts towards another event (Stay Home and #Platinumwithme), starts with the first letter of my PSN name, hits the HC and that about covers this entry. I enjoyed the story the first time around...could have done without the five or six replays of the end of the game to clean up the trophies...was a bit surprised at the platinum rarity considering how easy the game is...but after experiencing how tedious trophy cleanup is...I get it now. Other platinum game was Energy Balance. While it is a math puzzle game that would be pretty challenging without schooling...it doesn't involve anything with schools....instead you are a Cat spaceship trying to balance the energy in your ship to fly home. They probably could have done without trying to make it into a story...but whatever. It's actually fun if you don't use the program that solves it for you...but if you just want some easy trophies by all means use the program lol

Well that was quick....
Platinum #113
Energy Balance
I bought this game about a year and a half ago for the Spelling Bee event. I needed an 'E' for my word and I didn't have any games in my stable to choose from. I ended up getting four 'E' games altogether and ended up going with probably one of the worst games I've played in Eekeemoo: Splinters of Dark Shard for that event. This game seemed to be your usual quick plat game that people will stack to pad their platinum count. I wasn't in a rush to add a game like that to my profile so figured I'd sit on it until I could use it for an event. As it turns out, there is a Puzzle category in the Stay at Home and #PlatinumWithMe event. I wasn't looking forward to this really and figured I'd get it out of the way since I was on the fence about what to play next. Turns out....it's actually a fun puzzle game. I enjoyed it way more than Pic-A-Pix Color. This was actually interesting and somewhat challenging (at least some of the puzzles).
The premise of the game is really stupid...you're like a cat spaceship or something that needs to get home and you need to 'Balance' the energy in your ship or something in order to get your ship to fly. I only read a few of the intro text parts because I didn't really care about the story...just wanted some puzzles. The puzzles are pretty interesting...it's kind of like a math Crossword Puzzle/Sudoku. The first set of puzzels are numbered from like -10 through 10 (it may have been -8 to 8 but I don't remember exactly) and you have a crossword puzzle style grid. You have to rearrange the numbers to add up to the total going from right to left or up and down. Some of the numbers are shared between two directions, and once you get a line to = the end number, an energy beam shoots through and you have 'Energy Balance'. Getting all of the lines to balance solves the puzzle. The first several are pretty basic and they get larger and more complex the further you go. It's a really short game as there are only 20 puzzles in the whole thing, however there is some replay value since the puzzles are randomized. The grid is the same, but the numbers change. If you get stuck you can shuffle it up and start again.
My strategy was to try and fine a line where it was more obvious what numbers were needed and then work from there. Often times it was starting from one corner and getting all that I could. Once you have most of the grid 'balanced' you can start to move some stuff around to see where you need to focus. There are a lot of solutions for each line and maybe only a few for the whole grid. Hardcore mode was much harder as I want to say the numbers ranged from -40 to 40. I mean some of the lines were easy as you needed like -82 to get it to balance...so obviously it'll take a lot of big negative numbers to reach it. That took a little longer. I was also either pretty good at solving these, or got pretty lucky with my grids because no puzzle took me more than 45 minutes.
If you just want an easy plat...I did see on the game page someone created a small algorithm program that will solve the puzzles for you...but honestly they aren't that hard to solve and I found them quite fun. In the end, I don't feel like this game is quite the blemish on my profile as I initially thought it would be considering it was actually pretty fun. If you like puzzle games, it is worth the couple of bucks I spent on it.

Yeah I was trying to just cut and move them from my backlog area up to my 'Currently Playing' area and they didn't appear. It has happened before and I never noticed, but I think this is the answer:
I use Chrome at work, which is where I set up most of my first page and I use Firefox at home so this makes perfect sense. Thank you! I'll have to spend some time cleaning up my OP

Yeah, I bought the VR last year as a kind of impulse buy. It's not bad, but I prefer playing normal games. Driveclub VR is pretty good as far as the graphics go. It can get a little blurry, but for the most part it's clear. My kids got me this game last year for my birthday after I bought the VR. I don't generally play driving/racing games, but since I saw the server was shutting down, I wanted to make sure I got those out of the way so I could take my time with it. Getting to level 60 will be a bit of a grind, but if I do it slowly at my own pace, I'll enjoy it a lot more.
Since you mentioned it...
Platinum #112
Beyond: Two Souls
I started this game right around the time I started Jurassic World Evolution and having just finished Heavy Rain and really enjoying Jurassic World, I kind of put it on the back burner after playing the first chapter. It then got pushed further back once FF7R arrived in the mail. When I started it back up, I just started from the beginning since I was only about 15 minutes in. True to form, I got another good story with lazy Trophy art and somewhat frustrating controls...the acting in the game was top notch...I mean Willem Dafoe is a legend and Ellen Page is pretty decent herself. The story is more similar to Indigo Prophecy than Heavy Rain since there is an element of the supernatural.
The QTE's in this game were the easiest yet. There were no five minute long QTE scenes like in Indigo and nothing like the driving scene in Heavy. It seemed like this game focused much more on the story being the focus and I liked it a lot better because of it. People don't generally play these games because QTE games are awesome...they generally play to get a good story and when the QTE's get to be too much, you spend too much time focusing on dumb control movements and less what is happening story-wise on the screen.I was really able to follow along much more closely. While I did like the story...I did think it was the weakest of the three I've played so far. There seemed to be several different times where they got lazy with the details to infuse drama when there probably shouldn't be. In some scenes, Jodie is godlike and in others she gets taken out with ease. If she's going to have an entity linked to her that can shield her from bullets and be her third eye....it should be able to protect her from a punch in the head. Her powers were just too inconsistent as far as when they seemed to want to work and when they couldn't. I thought the premise was really cool though and there were times where the story did hit on all cylinders.
My biggest issues with the game, was having a trophy tied to using a second controller to control Aiden...that just seemed unnecessary and was a little annoying. It also made me do an extra playthrough of the last like six or seven chapters. I knew going into the game, I should try to save all of the characters I could when it appeared. Trying to stay mostly spoiler free, I didn't look much beyond the trophies. Well in one of the longest chapters...I talked to someone too early and it prevented me from saving one of the characters....I knew I had to save him, but go locked past a checkpoint. Because you can't chapter select for the two controller trophy, I couldn't just replay the chapter via chapter select and fix my mistake or I would have had to do a whole other playthrough. Instead, I finished my first run without saving everyone or killing everyone and I had to replay those last chapters an extra time to get all of the endings.
That was my other huge issue...you had to watch the goddamn credits on every single ending. They were like six or seven minutes long so with something like eight different endings...I spent 45 minutes to an hour just watching credits roll. I get them wanting you to watch them all once....but after you've seen them...it should let you skip. That felt like a huuuuge waste of time. To play the last chapter, watch an ending and watch the credits takes about an hour exactly. Some of the endings you can just replay the epilogue chapter to watch...but about five of them you have to replay the last chapter....so that's five hours of just replaying the last chapter. Again, it would have been nice to have the option to skip any cut scene you've already witnessed.
Considering how easy the game is compared to the other two....I was surprised to see how rare the platinum is. However, after having played it....unless you are a completionist....it is 100% not worth all the replays. Also if you don't have a second controller...that is a bullshit trophy as well. Since I am a completionist, I did the whole song and dance. I would rank this #3 of the series so far with HR as #1 and IP as #2. Having said all that, it was free and is interesting enough to play if you don't care about the Platinum.
I'm doing something now I've never really done before. I'm on purpose balancing five games at once. It'll be three soon enough since Energy Balance is really short and surprisingly easy. I know there is a program out there to give you the answers....but I actually enjoy puzzle games and this one is math based...which I enjoy even more. I think I got really lucky on a few of the puzzles since I solved them pretty quickly. I started Hardcore mode today and that may take a little longer. I also started Steins; Gate and Everybody's Golf for the #StayHome event. EG will take a while so I figured I'd start chipping away at that and even though I've heard SG is really good....I feel like I'll want to actually play something over the 30 hours it takes to platinum. I'm playing it completely blind and I was very surprised that it is in Japanese with English Subtitles and no dubbing. Due to that, I'll have to pay closer attention and won't be able to multitask by listening. I've got all the hard stuff done in Castlevania: Harmony of Despair with just the grindy stuff left...however that game is really fun so don't mind the grind at all. I'm also about 2/3's of the way through the gold star races in Driveclub VR.
I also have downloaded Mass Effect onto my PS3 in preparation to start. I know they are remastering it, but I paid for the PS3 version and might as well play it. Since I want that series to be consecutive on my trophy log...I'm going to try and knock out these quicker games for the event before I start the series. I'm hoping to start that in about two weeks. I'll probably do Steins; Gate while I'm working since it's all reading stuff, so should get through that pretty quickly.
/edit ps...did this site stop allowing you to copy and paste the game thumbnails into posts? I know the bigger images you need to post a direct link to via imgur or something, however I built my whole first post from copying and pasting the thumbnails....I can't do that anymore and my backlog list is missing some games since I'm too lazy to save all the thumbnails, upload them to imgur and then post the link here...

It was a lot more fun than I was expecting. I didn't think anything was especially hard in the DLC outside of the beating in less than 4 hours on hard difficulty or higher. For that one I made a save at about three and a half hours in and was in striking distance of making it. I had to restart from that save about 4 times before I got it. What I learned is Dilophosaurus and any of the Sauropods are decent for boosting your dinosaur rating. I ended up doing it in three hours and fifty-nine minutes. I used the last Dr. Wu map (since it is small and manageable) but I guess the dinosaur score requirement is slightly higher, so I made it a little harder on myself. But you can put like 15 Dilophosaurus in one paddock together, so when you are pushing for those last points on the dinosaur score...they are good to use. The other thing you need to do is use dinosaurs that have a high comfort threshold. The only carnivore that I really found (that you get early enough anyways) that works is Ceratosaurus. They will make it through a storm without breaking a fence...most of the other carnivores will. The biggest thing for success though, is getting the Dig Yield upgrade as soon as possible. The Hammond Foundation fee is insanely high and you'll never make enough money to get 5 stars in four hours without selling ores from the digs. Once you get dig yield upgraded...slap it on as many times as you can and then get the extra expedition helicopter and you should develop a good source of income to finish in time. That was really the only hard one...the rest just took patience.
I have enjoyed them so far. They aren't really fun to 'play' but the stories have all been solid. Indigo Prophecy was without a doubt the hardest. The QTE's on hard are near impossible without writing them down or following along with a video guide. The Simon Says style of QTE with the joysticks and how quick/finicky they can be makes it frustrating...plus they are incredibly long. Heavy Rain was vastly improved as far as controls and QTE's, however that had some frustrating segments as well. Beyond: Two Souls is a cake walk with the QTE's compared to the prior two and my biggest frustration has been the camera and that moving the camera and interacting with items is the same button. A lot of times I've accidentally touched something I didn't mean to just trying to change the camera angle...but the story is top notch again. I may even finish that game up today, if not definitely tomorrow. Since they were all free, they are definitely worth playing! I think the rarity is more due to the amount of chapters you have to repeat to get all the trophies than being hard.

Been a while since I've updated here, but I'm currently running through all the endings of Beyond: Two Souls and have some time to kill. It's funny, my job never tracked my internet usage when I was in the office, however now that I'm working remotely, they have notified us that they are tracking our internet usage to make sure we are working. Thankfully they told us right when we went home and I've never had to answer for my time on this website Of course they could be lying....but it's not worth it lol I really want this working remotely thing to work out so it can be an option for me once all of this craziness has subsided. I had all the time in the world to post here when I was in the office, but now that I generally am using my work PC at home...I can't as easily lol
Anyway, I have basically got the platinum for Final Fantasy 7 Remake and wanted to put my thoughts down now since I've decided to save the last trophy or platinum for a milestone. I only have chapter 2 left on Hard Mode (wasn't sure how tough hard mode would be and wanted an easier chapter to be able to finish for the plat/milestone since that could be a few months), I will keep this relatively spoiler free...no mention of things that happen, but I will talk about some of the technical things.
Overall, the game is extremely well done. I'll start with the things I loved. I've mentioned it before, but it hits all the right nostalgia notes while also adding enough fresh things to keep it engaging. They have really expanded on some of the early peripheral characters, adding depth, which made a lot of what happens early in the game more impactful. For example, I played the OG so many hours and never realized Jessie was a girl. She just didn't have a huge roll in the OG. Not only do you find out she's a girl, but she has a personality and a backstory that really makes you invested into her story line and character arc. The same goes for all the members of Avalanche and I really appreciated the extra time they took to make those characters more meaningful. I really enjoyed the direction they have gone with the story...it is mostly faithful to the OG but I can also understand why some of the purists have some issues with it. There are some things I don't quite understand...but that's just making me look forward to part 2.
I also really enjoyed the battle system. They made combat feel very fluid while adding a turn-based element that felt pretty innovative to me. At first I mostly played with Cloud because I love Cloud...however by the end I found myself enjoying playing as the other characters just as much and had fun bouncing around between them. Aerith was the only character I had a hard time playing as a main character and felt she was much more suited to side duty. Of course there are times you need to play as her to build the ATB bar faster, however I played her more out of necessity than it being as fun as the other characters. Switching characters is actually an important strategy in Hard Mode as the character you are playing as garners most of the attention and the ones you aren't playing as tend to block better. To stay alive in Hard Mode, it is pretty important to bounce around to keep the attention moving around instead of focused on only one person. Apparently there is a Classic Mode difficulty which gives you a way to play Turn Based, however I never tried it. I wanted to play using the Normal Battle system since I knew I'd have to when going through Hard Mode....I figured it'd be even harder without the practice. As it turns out...I didn't find Hard mode very hard at all due to how comfortable I got with the system by the end of my first playthrough. Once you learn the mechanics and figure out a materia build that works for you...Hard Mode is really not bad at all. There are a few tricky fights and annoying enemies....but overall it wasn't too bad.
The music was also fantastic. I think Aerith's theme song may be my favorite video game song of all time. I loved Celes' theme song in Final Fantasy 6 as well...but I have the OG FF7 theme for my PS4 dashboard and I hear that song every time I turn on my system and it never gets old. The music in this game just hits you right in the feels and is probably the nostalgic thing they hit on most. It's not unusual for a Final Fantasy game to have a great soundtrack...but I wanted to mention it anyways. Graphics are generally amazing, however there is some syncing issues with the voices and the mouths at times and some areas of attention to detail seem oddly lacking...however those instances are not very common. I thought the voice acting was great and the characters sounded almost exactly as I imagined them. The trophy list is also not too bad and makes you do pretty much everything there is to do in the game. I wouldn't have minded seeing one for completing the game log 100%...but the only real annoying trophy for me was the pull ups one...but even that wasn't that bad once you get a rhythm down. I also felt the controls for the game were easy to learn and pretty intuitive. There didn't feel like any wasted motion for me.
Some of my slight issues that don't make this game a perfect score for me are...the camera can be quite frustrating in battle. If you don't lock onto your target, you can easily lose sight of them and not know where the attack is coming from. This is especially evident when fighting ranged enemies. While I love 95% of what they did with the characters...there were a few characters that I don't think were done as well. A few were flat out annoying for me...but the ones that bothered me were only bit characters so this inconvenience was minimal. I thought that a lot of the side quests were throw away fillers that really didn't add anything to the story. Some of them did...but searching for cats felt like a waste of my time. I don't think they put a ton of effort into the side quests...which is a little disappointing since it would have been another chance to add some depth. You do need to suspend some disbelief in this game when it comes to physics because there are some awesome scenes where some amazing things happen and then a ten foot gap becomes a challenge you need to work out. Again, we're talking a fantasy game and you'll enjoy it more if you let things like that slide. My last small gripe was how the game forces you to slow down at some points. There are a lot scenes where you are sliding through tight spaces or balancing over something slowly or even just walking through areas where you just walk really slowly that are a little annoying. Thankfully, none of them are terribly long...but sometimes you just want to get where you need to go and don't want it to take 30 seconds when it could take 5 if your walking speed was your normal walking speed.
I'd probably give this game about a 9/10. I really enjoyed it and will most definitely pre-buy part 2 when it goes on sale. I feel like SE has had a lot of swings and misses lately with the games they've put out and I've almost stopped automatically buying anything that says Final Fantasy...but if the next installments are anywhere close to how well this game turned out...I'll be back on team SE full bore.
I'll try not to let a month go by before I update again as I have several games going on right now that I'm enjoying...maybe even a platinum in the next day or so to write about. Hope everyone is doing well!

You can also follow along using YouTube video with the same idea. That's how I got through some of those levels. I'd watch 4 moves, pause the video, do the same sequence in the game, pause watch next four moves, rinse, repeat. It's time consuming, but I found it easier than text. I originally tried to get as far as I could, writing down the moves on my own, but sometimes the sequence started with the left joystick and sometimes the right... the video just proved to be much easier. The length of the QTE's was what bothered me.

I'm still Kupo Lover. Only main game I'm missing is the remake, which I could pop in 10 minutes but am saving for a milestone. So that's 13 there and I have Adventures of Mana, A King's Tale and Comrades as the bonus.
Thanks for keeping us honest! 😀

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

I have to agree with this. I was 16 when the original came out and it probably is one of the games I've put the most hours in my life. I very much enjoyed the remake. It kept enough nostalgia to bring some butterflies and added enough new stuff (mostly in the spirit of the original) for me to really commend SE on the job they did. I'm genuinely curious where they take this going forward. I enjoyed the new battle system as it is fluid with an element of turn based. It isn't perfect as I felt there were a few gameplay/camera issues, however it exceeded my expectations. I was hoping for a lot while expecting the worst after some of their most recent releases...but this was a job well done. I also plan to expound a bit more in my thread soon.

Looks like I'll need to use one of my skips for this month....despite the tons of open world games I have...I didn't play any and only got the platinums for Spec Ops: The Line and Jurassic World Evolution. Spec Ops is an FPS with chapters and Jurassic World is a Sim style game. Hoping to do better with the themes this month!
April month end stats are:
Platinums: 109 + 2 ~> 111
100%: 123 + 2 ~> 125
Completion: 97.19% ~> 98..06% (+0.87%)
Year to Date:
Platinums: 102 + 9 ~> 111
100%: 117 +8 ~> 125 (KH3 DLC took one 100% away)
Completion: 99.14% ~> 98.06% (-1.08%)